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Category Archives: Complete Systems

With so many different laptops to choose from out on the market today. Makes trying to narrow down a laptop that will fit us damn near impossible. Granted while most can get away with a rinky dinky little “Tablet” for all of their needs, there are those who need to have a portable device that can do more then just read books, watch movies, or surf the net with. This is where Laptops come in handy, it is specifically built for those of us who need to have that added horsepower that no Tablet can give us, especially when it pertains to “Gaming.” I am not talking about playing simple little browser based games either, I am talking about games that will bring most desktop computers to their knees, this type of gaming is not meant for “Tablets”. Even I have to agree that Tablets do serve a purpose, but like all things in the computer world they are limited by what their hardware can do.

Then there are those who need a laptop that can do more then just play games. It needs to render large images for movies, games and doing CAD (Computer Aided Design, in other words Architecture) type of work. This type of work requires a laptop specifically capable of being able to perform this task effortlessly. And not just any ole’ laptop can perform this task effortlessly, these laptops need to house a Professional Workstation Video Cards, while also having a CPU capable of handling large loads that will be placed on it. I bring forth the HP Workstation EliteBook 8560w. Like most Workstation based laptops, the 8560w is not geared for gaming, it is geared for rendering or using CAD based programs. It will also make short work of those programs that support Parallel Processing, for more information please visit this link HERE. Please select the company you are inquiring about, and AMD will give what programs are fully supported by OpenCL/Parallel Processing.

The 8560w Laptop

I decided to leave out the packaging, because all we get is the Workstation , and a power adapter in a box. First impression of this Workstation is that this has a utilitarian look and feel to it. It also uses an circular brushed aluminum cover with a HP on the top. The HP symbol does light up white, I personally wished HP left this completely out.

Unlike the HP DV6-6135DX laptop I reviewed HERE, this Workstation requires us to push the center button to open up the Workstation . Once again HP uses a brushed aluminum skin on the center portion of the Workstation . Also that HP has a fairly large multigestural touch pad with a total of 6 mouse buttons right in the forward center of the Workstation . The screen I am pleased to see that HP used a non reflective screen covering. I got real tired of having things reflected back at me making it harder to see my screen on my other laptop.

An up close shot of the multigestural touch pad with the 6 mouse buttons. According to HP all six of these buttons are programmable. I have yet to test this potion out.

Looking at the on/off button. This looks awfully similar to the HP DV6-6135DX laptop.

Unlike the DV6-6135DX laptop, this Workstation comes with 4 added buttons located to the far right of the Workstation . These will turn on/off the wireless card, mute the sound, access our favorite browser quickly, and give use quick access to the Windows calculator.

This little orange button that sits right in the middle of the Workstation , is a finger operated mouse. In case the touch pad driving you nuts, you can move your pointer with this button as well. I found it to be rather sensitive, and a bit stiff, so tread lightly.

A good shot of the screen. As I stated this screen uses a matte finish making it loads easier for us to see our screen.

Time for me to see exactly is included on this Workstation as far as expandable ports. In the front center of this laptop is the locking mechanism for the screen.

To the far left, are the SD-MMC reader, and the activity lights. These lights light up orange/white depending on the state of the Workstation .

Making our way to the left side of the Workstation . towards the front of the Workstation are the Fire-wire 800 port, 2 USB 2 ports, an E-SATA port, and finally a Display Port hook up.

Towards the back of the 8560w Workstation is the rear side facing vent (do not block), and the 10/100/1000 Ethernet port.

Stepping out away to get you a better feel for how HP put this Workstation together. Now HP does include a Express Card/54 port, it is located directly below the USB ports.

Time for us to give the backside a good look over.

On the right hand side is where we hook up the AC power adapter.

Top the far left hand side, is the ever ancient modem.

Time for us to look at the right hand side of the Workstation .

Starting off the rear part of the Workstation , HP includes a D-SUB monitor port.

Towards the front of the right hand side are the SS USB ports (USB 3), and the headphone/mic 1/8″ ports.

Then right in the middle of the D-SUB/USB 3 ports is the DVD multi drive.

on the bottom side of the Workstation is where we can hook up an extra battery, or hook this laptop up to a docking station, and where we can add remove memory, HDDs, and or add other expandable cards to this Workstation .

One of the vents that is being used on the 8560w Workstation.

A better close up shot of the vent holes (do not block these).

To remove the battery, locate the far right hand side lock (if the Workstation battery is facing you).

Then slide that lock to the right and the battery can be removed.

To remove the cover so you can add/remove memory/HDDs. That lock is located on the left side. Then slide that lock to the left and the cover will pop out for you to remove it.

Then gently slide the cover towards the front of the Workstation and lift it off.

This is two of four memory expandable DIMMs on this Workstation , the other two are located underneath the keyboard and requires complete disassembly to gain access.

This wireless card has some range, well it better by using 3 wires instead of the traditional 2 we see on other laptops. The NIC and Wireless card uses Intel’s controller.

This is the HDD cage where we can change out the HDD to a bigger drive or to a SSD.

The 8560w Workstation does have a light up keyboard for when we need to read/type in the dark.

As we can see there is quite a bit that this Workstation comes with. Now all I been able to locate on this laptop are 2 DIMMs for the memory. From looking at HPs website, the other 2 memory DIMMs are located underneath the keyboard and requires complete disassembly to gain access to them.

Testing Methodology

Like all second generation Core i5/i7 CPU’s from Intel they all utilize lower clock frequencies while they are just idling on the desktop. As you can see I am using two sticks of 4 GBs totaling my memory to 8 GBs, and that I have indeed dual channel enabled.

But once we start a program, that is when they ramp themselves to their peak performance frequencies. Now on HP site states this CPU is a Core i5 2540 2.6GHz, But CPU-z is showing me a 3 GHz CPU core frequency, this is because of Intel’s newest Turbo 2 capabilities. I am using wPrime (located behind the CPU-z SS, to ramp up the CPU to full load.

MSI Afterburener reports the video card indeed a AMD FIRE Pro 5950m, and that its frequencies are 725 Core, and 900 memory (due to the nature of GDDR5 memory you have to multiply this number by 4 for actual effective memory speed.) I wonder, can I overclock this video card.

MSI Afterburner allows me to max out the GPU Core speed. But does it hold that Core frequency of 775?

Hmm lets fire up Unigine Heaven 2.5 and verify. Nice, looks like that I can overclock the video card. Do I recommend overclocking the video card? NO, you are on your own if you do overclock the video card. Myself or the DGC do not take any responsibility for your actions, I am just here to report the facts.

Since this laptop is in a class all its own, I will just include this laptop in the results. On the benchmarking of this laptop I will not be using a lot of games/game benchmarks for the main reason this is a workstation laptop, and is geared more for rendering not gaming. Instead I will be using one of the most popular rendering benchmarks (as I have a friend who does do a lot of architectural design) SpecPerfVeiw. I will be including screen shots of the runs I performed on the HP 8560w Workstation laptop. To ensure my result are accurate I ran each benchmark a total of three runs per, then used the worst performing run for my results from each of the benchmarks. There will be 4 benchmarks I could not get a screenshot of, I will have to use a Chart for these 4 benchmark runs I performed, for some odd reason I could not get a good screen shot of these benchmarks. Same rules apply for the other benchmarking runs.

I changed out the standard 500 GB SATA 3Gb/s HDD for my screaming Crucial 128 GB SATA 6Gb/s SSD; so your results will vary greatly from my own in regards to the storage benchmark runs. All other benchmarks should be similar to my numbers, as a SSD only speeds up load times, and not increase the computer performance. I should also mention that this laptop only came with 4 GB of memory, I added a second 4GB of memory so I can have dual channel capabilities. I recommend that if you do plan on purchasing this particular laptop, that you go ahead and buy the extra 4 GB of memory.

ALL TESTING WAS PERFORMED WITH OUT THE USE OF THE BATTERY, AND WHILE THIS WORKSTATION WAS PLUGGED INTO THE AC POWER ADAPTER WITH A USB POWERED LAPTOP COOLER

DO NOT PERFORM THIS TYPE OF TESTING UNLESS YOU ARE USING A LAPTOP COOLER.

General Usage

Windows 7 Experience

PCMark7

General HDD Testing

ATTO

AS SSD

HD Tune

CrystalDiskMark 3

General Memory Testing

SiSoft Bandwidth, Latency

Aida 64 Read, Write, Copy (Bandwidth), Latency

General CPU Testing

SiSoft Arithmetic, Multimedia

Aida 64, CPU Queen, VP8

Cyber link Power Director Converted a 19 minute movie to both an AVI, and a MPEG 4 HD maximum Quality

General Rendering Testing

Since I have not much experience in this area, so I will let those who are more experienced come to your conclusions. All I can say that I will start utilizing the Fire Pro more to gain a better understanding of how this video card truly works. But from what I can tell you from CineBench, POV Ray, as these are CPU bounded the performance levels are fairly good for a simple little ole’ dual core CPU.

General Gaming Testing

The 8560w Workstation is not geared up for gaming, is meant for rendering purposes. But if you want to play a game here and there, it will provide with some gaming capabilities. Lost Planet 2 (Or shall I say Lost Cause 2) shows to me that it is not optimized for PC, and that it is indeed another prime example of a SCREWED UP PORT, and that Game manufacturers are A BUNCH OF LAZY ASSES.

The Wrap Up

I apologize for not giving you ladies/gentlemen any insight on how the 8560w Workstation performs on a day to day basis. I am right in the middle of getting ready for school, and have had a few appointments. When classes do start, and I get a bit more time spent on this particular laptop I will include a general usage portion to this review. But for now I need to wrap things up with what I know.

Considering that this Workstation only came with a dual core CPU, the performance of this workstation is what I consider to be good. I do recommend that if you do plan on purchasing this Workstation and can afford an upgraded CPU (Quad Core) and 8 Gigs of memory then do just that. If you are on a budget, then the dual core CPU will perform quite well for you. Now this WOrkstation fits those types of people who like to do rendering based programs, like Adobe After Effects CS5, Auto Desk 3ds Max 2011, and so on. and need a portable computer for either work/play/or school then the 8560w will fit right up your alley. This Workstation has a beginning cost of 1350 USD, so it is a bit more expensive then your “Traditional Laptops”, but then again those “Traditional Laptops” are not geared up for rendering based programs either.

These times we all find ourselves constantly moving around. So the need of having a mobile platform that can move right along side us has become a necessity. While some get away with a “Smart Phone/Super Phone”, or what ever you call them, there are some of us that have adopted the use of a tablet into our daily/hectic lives. But for some of us out there, we need to have a portable computer at our disposal. This is where Laptop computers come in handy, because it gives the portability we need for our computers; as well as, gives us the full functionality of our home computers as always on the go.

Even I found myself having to break down, and get something that can accommodate my some what portable life style I found myself in, this being coming and going from school, and having to go to various places that trying to pack up my rather extremely large and not quite so portable main rig “Mini Me.” Not very fun having to tote a computer that weighs roughly 60+ pounds from place to place. So getting a laptop computer was the best course of action I needed to take. The question remains, which one do I go out and get? Man I forgot how difficult it is to actually sit my little ass down and do the whole “shopping thing.” I am just glad my mom was not present, because clearly she would have taken my already overwhelmed self of “Shopping” to a whole new level, like our mothers do from time to time. But, that’s why we all love our mothers ;). I wanted a laptop that would give the greatest amount of flexibility with out having to completely empty out my very own wallet. So after pondering for a very long time on this “Whole Shopping Endeavor”, my mom would be so proud of me :). I decided to pick up one of AMD’s newest CPU/APU member 3500M. The only laptop that contained this particular APU (This is not a typical CPU anymore, as AMD combined an integrated GPU with the CPU. And this technology is aptly named the APU, Accelerated Processing Unit) is a Hewlett Packard Pavilion DV6-6135DX.

So lets go see what this little Laptop is fully capable of, as I run it into the ground, in a typical Dragon fashion.

The Laptop

I am going to skip the entire packaging BS, as this laptop only came with an AC power brick and a laptop (well seems only logical they ad this because that is why we bought it).

As we can see the Hp DV6-6135DX Laptop has some rather nice curves to it. Also HP uses a brushed aluminum look and feel the the entire skin of the laptop. Now a good portion of the main upper/center skins of this laptop are made out of aluminum not a cheap plastic.

This laptop is not all that large, so it should easily accommodate us when all we have is a small work area to work off from.

The HP DV6-6135DX laptop is fairly thin as well, some of my college books (or most of them) are thicker then this laptop. The overall weight is around the 6 pound range so it is not all that heavy, transporting it in our arms or hands should be pretty effortlessly.

Lets look at the left side of the laptop. Starting from the front of the laptop (right) and working to the back (left) HP includes front Line in, Mic, and Headphone 3.5mm jacks, then we get 2 USB headers, followed by a 10/100/1000 Ethernet port, an included HDMI output, and a standard D-SUB 15 pin monitor port. The slotted holes to the rear is the exhaust port for the heatsink.

A better upclose image of the exhaust port.

Then HP placed another small exhaust port for the heatsink on the right hand side of the rear of the laptop as well. This is not an intake, it is only an exhaust, you do not want to block these ports. The intake ports reside on the bottom of the laptop (will show these later).

The backside of the HP DV6-6135DX laptop.

Time for us to look at the right side of the laptop. Moving right to left (rear to front) we see the location of the main AC adapter plug in for those times when we need to charge up our battery, or some serious gaming. Next up are 2 more USB headers, (these look like USB 2 AND NOT usb 3 as these are typically blue not black), then finally we get the DVD burner/Blue Ray disc player.

Right next to the Blue Ray disc player are 2 white LEDs, these are for the power notification and for the HDD indication.

Then finally the front of the laptop. The long slot to the far left, is for SD cards, the other long slots are for the speaker system.

Pretty much a standard keyboard layout that I have seen on multiple different types of laptops. The touch screen that HP is using is a multi-gesture touch screen. One of the areas i was not to thrilled about this laptop is the LCD screen is glossy, and it reflects quite a bit back at the user.

Up close shot of the multi-gesture touch screen.

Another thing the HP added to this laptop is a biometric scanner.

Right below the LCD screen and to the far left of the upper laptop are 2 more small buttons. The silver button is the on/off power button, while the smaller black button is for you to access to your favorite browser.

Hp also includes a HD web camera, that is located right above the LCD screen and in the center.

Lets give a quick look at the bottom end of the DV6-6135DX laptop. This is where all of your fresh air intakes are located at, DO NOT BLOCK THESE INTAKE PORTS. the APU/Dedicated GPU are located on the far right hand side of the laptop.

To remove the battery from the laptop is pretty simple task, just psuh the little switch to the left and the battery will be released so you can remove it. This step is necessary for you so you can remove the center cover on this laptop.

To remove the center cover so you can add/replace memory, change out HDDs is pretty much identical to how you remove the battery. But this time instead of sliding the switch to the left, you slide it to the right. Then carefully lift up on the upper portion of the cover until it is fully removed. To replace the cover just go in the exact opposite of removing this cover.

This is where you can remove the HDD, add/remove the memory, also remove/replace the Blue Ray drive if it is needed. The little card located right above the memory is the wireless B, G, N card.

A close up look at each of the 4 intakes on this laptop, again I implore you not to cover these intake ports up as it will cook your laptop.

Pointing Device Touchpad with support for multitouch gestures, LED border accent and on/off button

HDMI Output

Blu-ray Player

Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit

CyberLink PowerDVD; Adobe Reader and more

HDD Western Digital Blue 5400 RPM 640GB

Graphics Card AMD Radeon HD 6750M

As we can see this little laptop comes pretty loaded for only being roughly 650 USD. Now A quick word about the how the APU works with the Dedicated 1 gig 6750 video card. Now the newer APU’s from AMD when paired up with a AMD series video card will automatically run the two GPU’s in crossfire increasing the frame rates of our games. The idea sounds solid enough, but in reality of things well we will just have to wait and see how this type of technology works. The APU comes clocked in at 1.5GHz when running all four cores, but if you are just using a single core the AMD turbo feature will ramp the APU up to 2.4 GHz. I will comment a bit more on the usage of this laptop after I show the benchmark numbers. So stay tuned up next are the benchmark numbers.

Torture Session

A CPU-Z ScreenShot of the HP Pavilion DV6-6135DX laptop.

Since I do not have another laptop comparable to this laptop, I will only be listing the performance numbers from this laptop only. Plus pitting this laptop up against my over powered desktops would not seem very fair at all for this laptop. All of the benchmarks I used will be listed below and their respected settings. I switched out the slow ass 5400 RPM HDD for a much faster 7200 Seagate Momentus 320 HDD. So your results will vary greatly from my own. Also all my testing was performed with out the battery plugged in, and while I was hooked up by the AC power adapter brick as well as using a laptop cooler.

DO NOT PERFORM THIS TYPE OF TESTING UNLESS YOU ARE USING A LAPTOP COOLER.

General usage CPU benchmarks

SiSoft

Aida 64

Cyber link Power Director Converted a 19 minute movie to both an AVI, and a MPEG 4 HD maximum Quality

I tired to give me a more robust benchmarks to gauge the performance of this laptop. Now again all of these benchmarks were performed while I was on the AC power adapter with the battery removed, also while using a laptop cooler. The use of the battery while trying to perform these benchmarks proved to be rather interesting. Also the HDD that HP used was replaced with a 7200 RPM HDD.

General CPU Usage

Time in Minutes

Time in Seconds

Looking at these results, and knowing how fast a stock Core i5 750 CPU handles this type of CPU work. The AMD 3500M Llano APU is not exactly the fastest thing on the planet. AMD needs to work on trying to figure out a way on increasing the CPU core speed, but considering that if you are going to do this type of serious tasking it be best to have a good desktop to handle it. The HP Pavilion DV6-6135DX laptop will get the job done if you find yourself in a pinch.

HDD Testing

Reminder I switched out the 5400 RPM HDD that came with this laptop, for a fast Seagate Momentus 7200 RPM HDD. Looking at these performance numbers the HP Pavilion DV6-6135DX laptop is right on par with a desktop computer. I know the performance levels of these HDDs in a desktop environment as I am running 4 of these HDDs in RAID 0 on my main computer Mini Me.

General Usage Gaming Benchmarks

Reminder all of these tests were done at a resolution of 1280 x 720 at medium graphical settings. The only benchmark that did not fallow this resolution/graphical settings was Alien vs Predator as I could only use the native resolution of 1366 x 768. Again all other games were set to 1280 x 720, so if these performance numbers do not jive with you then please feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. Located on the main front page.

Thank you, Dragon.

Direct X 10.1

Direct X 11

Looking at our gaming benchmarks we can see that the HP DV6-6135DX laptop does have the capability of playing most games with considerable ease. But, we can also tell that the low core speed of the CPU hinders the overall performance of the video card; therefore, bottlenecking the video card(s). If we look closely at Unigine Heaven 2.5 benchmark (as this was the only benchmark that allowed me to move between all three DX versions) we can get an idea that AMD’s APU is not properly Crossfiring with the 6750 video card (verified with MSI Afterburner as it would only show one GPU being utilized during DirectX 9 runs). Since this this laptop is considered a medium low end machine, I was not expecting much playability with any of the Direct X 11 titles. With the games Dirt 3, Hawx 2, and Stalker Call of Pripyat while under Direct X 11 showed some pretty impressive numbers.

General Usage

I have used this laptop for over a week now. Mostly it has been going back and forth from home to school, and then sits here waiting for me to go back to school the next day. This laptop does boot up fairly quickly (of course the 7200 RPM drive helps out), and the connection over a wireless connection is pretty good as well. This laptop does not get hot enough for my “normal day to day” usage so i do not need to bring along the laptop cooler when I am in class as the bottom pads of the laptop are plenty tall enough to allow enough fresh air to enter the laptop to keep it cool. During this type of usage the battery will last me around 4 hours, this is with the power saving features of Windows 7 in full effect. I watched a Blue Ray movie and my time on the battery dramatically reduced to a mere 2.5 hours (roughly), I should mention I turned off all of the Windows 7 power saving features also turned the brightness of the main screen up from a 50% to a 80%, and i am running a 7200 RPM HDD. So your mileage may vary from my own. I do not recommend you run this laptop while gaming on the battery, as it will cut your frame rates in half, and your battery life will be significantly reduced. Not to mention it will start run a tad warm if you are not using a laptop cooler. So if you plan on doing some serious work on this laptop, make sure you are plugged into the AC adapter and hook up a good laptop cooler.

The Wrap Up

Time for me to wrap up this review. All in all the HP Pavilion DV6-6135DX laptop did quite well. Granted the CPU performance was not all that staggering, but it did provide me with enough power to do simple tasking. Since I got a massive home computer, any serious labor/gaming that needs to be done will be done on that computer. While I use this laptop as a go between. Typically when you purchase a laptop that is in the 650 USD range they are completely useless for any type of gaming, but this laptop will provide you with enough power to get your game on. I will have to mention this choose your games wisely, because this laptop will play most games quite well with a medium settings @ a resolution at 1280 x 720. On other games this laptop will give you less then desirable frame rates. Now considering that Ipads, and other tablets go for on around the 600USD range and are seriously hindered on what they can do, and this laptop is essentially a “portable computer” that will give you all of the benefits of a home computer but mobile, I will have say that the price to performance ratio makes up for more then enough. Did I mention that you can watch Blue Ray movies, burn DVDs, and do anything you can do on a computer? I want to see a “Tablet” do what this Laptop can do.

The HP Pavilion DV6-6135DX laptop earns a well respected and earned 7 out of 10 and the:

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